Bloodlust
by QueenOfMischief13
Summary: Lots of cutting


BLOODLUST

His hand scrabbles at the key hole of the door to his flat—missing the slot once, twice. The third time he manages to stuff the key in the correct place, despite the nervous tremor in his grip, and he shoves the door open. Turning to meet your eye, a small, disconcerted smile crosses his lips as he takes your hand and shepherds you inside. He taps the wall, and the living room is immediately bathed in a soft lamplight. It shines warmly against the darkened London sky that peers through the large front windows, and the inviting ambiance comforts you, assuaging the momentarily forgotten dread. But comfort is not why you are there.

Warm and cozy is the polar opposite of what he wants tonight.

Anxiety floods your chest once more.

He closes the door behind you, and presses himself to you, the long, leanness of him wrapping itself into your nooks, your crannies, your fears. You breathe slightly faster now. Part of you wants it over with, the pain finished. Or better yet, for it to never happen at all. For the conversation that started this to have never taken place—for you both to be back in that moment before he worked up his courage enough to broach the subject.

Yes, you are terrified. An adrenaline-inducing, vein-dilating terror is pounding in your soul.

But a whispers-in-the-dark, rabbit-hole Alice part of you wants to experience the rush he claimed it to be, the utter vulnerability and trust and plain fucking _life_he swore it was. The glitter in his eye, the utter excitement that vibrated off him as he described his desire to you intrigued you. You can't help but be…curious.

So in the semi-shadow of the living room, you push back the fear—at least to a tolerable distance. His breath, wafting through the curtain of your hair, makes the skin on the back of your neck prickle. He sighs softly into you, and raises a hand to your cheek. "Kara," he murmurs into your ear. "I swear to you, if you don't want to do this, I understand…nothing will change between us. I promise."

You let out the breath you didn't know you had been holding, and turn to him. Meeting his eyes, hooded in concern—for you, only you—you bite your lip. "Tom, I am afraid. I'm not going to lie. But I want to do this. For you. For…us."

"Are you _sure,_Kara?" He asks again, cupping both hands on your face, beatific in his beauty despite the decidedly carnal nature of what was about to take place. You know if you wanted to walk away, you could. Right now, no problems. But he needs this. And—you were starting to discover in his stare—you think that you do too. You nod.

He claims your lips with a passionate, possessive embrace and then proceeds downward to your neck. As his lips ravage your coconut-scented flesh, he makes slow, torturous work of your blouse and skirt, removing them with a tenderness he has never shown in any other night like this one.

Then again, there had never been a night like this with him.

As he leans further into you, pressing kisses to your collarbone, to your breasts, you cannot deny your burning, unquenchable desire for him, even in face of the terror that keeps pace through your veins alongside it. You pull off his jumper, running your hands over his smooth skin. Skin that, if he has his way, will be altered in a few minutes.

You unzip his trousers as he holds you, assuring you in the running of his hands up and down your arms. You work him out of his boxers, the motion familiar after two years of sharing his bed and his heart—but this time the _feeling_ is different—tinged and tinted with a titillation and electricity not present since the first few times you made love.

The spark takes over, calling you to a farther lust. Pressing yourself to his warmth, you meet his lips again in a firestorm of need. You slide your hands down his chest and palm his already hardening length, working the strokes with your fear for what is to come. He breaks the embrace, throwing his head back in a moan. "Fuck, darling," he groans. "That feels amazing."

You are not entirely sure how to proceed, but don't want to stop. You decide standard procedure can't hurt, so you kneel in front of him, pressing your lips to his length, and begin working your tongue over it, humming in your ministration. Another strangled noise erupts from his throat as he enters your mouth, gently, and thrusts a few times before pulling you, obviously with regret, back up to his lips. "No, Kara, not now."

He looks at you again, eyes searching, piercing, scanning. You sense that he is asking permission, and your breath shortens further. Not believing that you are doing it, almost imperceptibly you nod.

_Oh fuck, now, it's now._

He pulls you back into his embrace masterfully, and all of a sudden you are against his chest, in his arms, a bride being lifted across a threshold from which you will never return.

He carries you, almost timidly, into the bedroom. The pristine, neutral colored-room is also lit with lamplight, and he tenderly lays you on the bed, grey duvet soft against your skin. You look around, wondering if the evidence of tonight has already been placed, and you note with a sharp intake of breath the nightstand—it is laid cleanly with a white washcloth, upon which he has placed a small, neat stack of gauze, bandages, alcohol wipes, and what appears to be antibiotic ointment.

The utter insanity of this plan, this exploration, sounds a deafening call, but the hum of the fear is now drowned by the breathless anxiety…and, you are surprised to notice, arousal.

You hadn't wanted to, at first. When he had brought the idea up, nervous eyes darting to your face for your reaction, you were revolted, though you hid it enough to tell him that you would never sit in judgment of him, nor would you love him less for having asked. You had requested a bit of time to process this strange new need, and he had granted it.

You didn't speak about it for a week, and he respected your distance, wanting to give you room to fully accept or fully reject it. He told you he loved you either way, that he would honor whatever decision you made.

But the haunting, needing look in his eyes when he had brought it up, that glowing excitement as he talked about it—it walked with you, whispering its tenebrous truths as you went about your days. It gnawed at you, wore you down as a beggar in the street without Tom even having to be near. The revulsion you initially felt disappeared into the burning, consuming love you felt for him, combining with the curiosity for this…bizarreness?

When you had come back to him and acquiesced, a gleam of adoration colored his eyes, and he fell to his knees before you, throwing his arms around your hips and repeating his gratitude. You had looked down at him, brushing back his hair, and only asked because you had to know but feared the answer, "But Tom, why? Are you…hurting inside?" You could manage no other words, childlike as they were.

He had looked up sharply, with confusion. "No, love. Fuck, no, nothing like that. No. It's just…well, I did it once at University…it was amazing, with someone I truly cared about and trusted, and it took us to a whole other level of love, of sex, of everything. I felt so fucking…alive, love. And I have wanted it since…I want that with you. But only if you want it. And I haven't done it with anyone else. It's just, Kara…I love you. I trust you," he added, hastily biting his lip in the expression you knew to bespeak his fear that he had overshared.

You had put a finger under his chin, irresistibly drawn into him, joyous that he would want to share such a deep, hidden place of him with you. Scared as hell, to be sure, but hoping it would do for your relationship as he said it would.

Slammed back in the present by his touch on your face, you look back up at him, suppressing a nervous laugh, knowing he will want to stop if he thinks you are having any kind of second thoughts. A look of dedication and sweeping love for you in his eyes, he retracts his hand and moves around to his dresser.

Your eyes close, pounding of your heart not quite drowning out the sound of a drawer opening, the soft shirrrr of something metallic and sharp being eased out of a sheath.

His breath now over your face. His voice, but changed—deeper, commanding. "Don't move, love." And then, something cold and hard against your face. Terror washes through you as take a centering breath, trying to fight it off. You open your eyes, dreading the sight.

He is leaning over you, a gleaming sashimi knife held to your cheek. The laughter and kindness that dwell habitually in his eyes are fled. A roiling mixture of fear, concern and raging lust are written in the azure instead, and it at once scares the fuck out of you and sends a tsunami of bottomless lust through your stomach. The desire melts deliciously—sickeningly—with the fear, and you moan, ever so softly. Something is building, though it evades naming.

A small, satisfied, expectant smile crossed his face. Slowly, achingly slowly, eyes fixed on yours, he slides the knife to your neck, point a heartbeat from that tender skin where your pulse can be felt. Your breathing quickens, and a stab of fright strikes you, anxious that the movement might cause the razor-sharp metal to pierce your skin. But he watches, carefully, his chest heaving, eyes aflame, cock already hard.

Not moving the blade, he extends himself, catlike, over you. When his lips are centimeters from your ear, he breathes, "Do you trust me?"

Your eyes flutter shut for a moment as they involuntarily roll up in your head. The hardness against your thigh is throbbing, quicklysoquickly aching for release, and you want to give it to him, but he has other plans. He touches the blade to your neck, once more, and kisses you, softly, the pressure of his lips bespeaking longing and lust and protection and false menace and love.

"Yes," you gasp once he releases your mouth. "I trust you." And you know it is true. You know there will be no accidents, no mistakes. You twine your hand, taking care to avoid the knife, in his curls, tensing for what is surely next. You hate pain, run from it at any cost…but this…this you will do for him.

"You are safe, I swear it," he whispers again. "If at any time, Kara—"

"I know," you breathe, adrenaline flashing through you.

He exhales heavily at your breast, and snakes an arm around you, holding you fast in a lover's embrace as he slides the knife down to your collarbone. He kisses the area over and over, pelting it with sweetness as you prepare for the pain, _wantingitneedingitfearingit_.

"Now," he growls, and the wetness between your legs leaks to the duvet.

You feel the blade slice at an angle through your flesh, creating a large but not deep cut, and you cry out, clutching at his shoulders. The pain is biting, the knife severing nerve endings at your collarbone's flesh, but igniting them in the rest of you, and you feel yourself pushed toward the chasm of release for a need so sudden you didn't know it was there until your very cells screamed for the resolution. Pleasurepainpleasure and in the same instant, the rush of scorching, tearing lust runs through you again, assuaging the sharpness with sweetness and making your center throb with desire for him. You groan, and he looks at you, responding in kind, lust coloring the timbre of his voice. You arch your neck in pleasure, nails digging into his skin.

You feel your blood, hot against the gooseflesh of your skin, start to seep, and you raise a hand to feel the wetness, to offer it to him on your fingers, but the motion is blocked by his mouth on your collarbone gently sucking at the wound, drinking in your blood. A bizarre, bastard-worm of an emotion sweeps through you—a dirty monster-mélange of attraction and disgust as he swallows, sighing, moaning, grinding against you with a hardness you know will leave a bruise.

The knife finds its home once more against your neck, and you gasp both in happiness and apprehension as his now-free hand caresses your body, running so, so lovingly over your breasts, your face, into your hair. You can tell he is fighting the urge to take you, right now.

Raising his head to look at you, the blue of his eyes hooded with bloodlust, he whispers, "Are you all right, beloved?"

You see the red of your blood on his lips, and a deluge of hunger rises in you, responding to the sheer viscerality and primal drumbeat of the sight. It combines with the stinging, singing cut at your collarbone and a mad desire rips through you—a thirst that cannot be quenched with mere flesh. You want him—all of him—his hopes, fears, darknesses, light, and you want it all _now_. The heady sense of your own vulnerability, the proximity of the razor-sharpness so close to your lifeblood, controlled by your beloved, his hand the only barrier between breathing and not breathing and blood and lust and passion and real, screaming LIFE—Tom, your gatekeeper, your guardian, your potential executioner, should he desire or should his hand slip.

_Fuck, it's almost too much. I know what he means now. _

Breathless, writhing carefully, seeking friction against him but still afraid to move, you beg, "Please, Tom."

He seems to understand, and rises to kiss you, careful not to rub against your wound. He licks the hot blood once more before meeting your lips. The metallic taste rings with a tang in your mouth, and you almost spit him out, but the flavor rolls along your own tongue as his hand finds and presses a gauze to the cut on your collarbone. He stays there, the warm weight of his body against you counterpointing a yin-yang in comfort to the terror of the knife still at your jugular.

He kisses down the other side of your neck, slowly, and you feel his cock twitch further. His breathing is becoming ragged and you can feel his need growing desperate. Carefully, you open your thighs to him, wanting to be whatever it is he needs next.

Looking up shyly to you, he speaks. "Kara, please, will you?" he murmurs, cupping a hand to your face, a fathomless, frantic desperation in his eyes that had nothing to do with his pulsating length.

This is the part you had been fearing…you didn't care too horribly much about him cutting you, but you had no desire to harm him, though he had assured you repeatedly that to his brain it wasn't reported as pain.

He notes your hesitation and says quickly, "It's all right, darling, it's—"

You stopper his mouth with a kiss, sliding your hand up his wrist to the knife handle. He relinquishes it to you and quickly grabs a bandage, lips still locked with yours, and slowly moves off you. He presses a last kiss to your cut, and then the plaster. You know he will tend to it better after, and don't want him to lose his lust in caring for you.

You push him slightly, and he rolls onto his back, cock purple and dripping with need, and stretches out, fear mixed with reverence and adoration in his eyes. He turns his eyes to the blade, nostrils flaring, and makes a slight movement away from it before he stops himself.

You straddle him, easing yourself onto him, feeling your flesh envelop his. He lets out a yelp, almost bucking into you as you feel him twitch inside you, once—twice. His eyes close and he tries to thrust into you, but you place a calming hand on his chest. "Not yet. You don't have what you came for."

His eyes fly open, the blue a mere, miniscule ring around the black of his pupils. Your heart beating a tattoo in your ears, you place the knife's blade to his throat and he shudders, eyes speaking the same emotions you are still reeling from…a trust that you won't hurt him, but a tiny, mocking, noisy fear that you _might._

You feel the power in the room shift, and know at once the vaunting, heavy command of holding the knife. Knowing he wants it, you lay the knife to his chest, scraping so, so lightly upwards to the same point on his neck where he had held it against yours.

He is almost hyperventilating now, and his cock grows harder inside you. Holding the knife carefully, so fucking carefully, you begin to move up and down on him, relishing the gasp he lets out, the cry, the beg with which he implores you. He puts his hands to your hips, slamming you down and up on his length, and your sweet heat tightens around him with that beckoning, teasing call of release. He stretches his neck back in pleasure, and had you blinked you would have cut him, but you move your hand just in time.

He begins to thrust back, harder, needier, desperate. What you can see of the blue of his eyes is wild, wild—gazing up at you as a zealot would a saint. Almost instinctually (though from what instinct it stems from you know not), you know what he needs, and, still slamming up and down on his marble cock, you grab his hand. Gently, you draw a finger into his mouth, licking as he gasps. Pausing a moment in the lovemaking, you lay the blade to his fingertip and slice.

The scream he lets out is formed of passion and pain. His eyes widen and he gasps for air as you, no longer fearing the taste or the revulsion, put your lips back around his finger and suck, tracing up and down the wound, savoring his blood.

"Kara, please," he begs again, and you lean down on him, resuming the rhythmic pumping on him as he rips the bandage off and sucks more of your blood into him and then grabs your head, bringing it to his in an openmouthed kiss. Your blood mingles, the sweetish flavor of his mixing with the metal of yours, and he slams into you again and again.

He draws back, gasping. "Kara, please, more!"

Fearing yourself slightly—not entirely trusting yourself with the power he has granted you, you lay the blade once more to him, cutting the same place that you are cut. Another howl, and you fear for a moment you've hurt him, but he returns, raging farther as he comes, hard, his cock buried deep inside of you, every muscle tensed. The scream triggers your own release, and your last thought before you abandon yourself to the waves of white-hot bliss is to get the knife away from him, and you throw it across the room. You hear it hit the wall and you let go, slammed with a fire you have never felt before in orgasm as it catapults you to ecstasy.

When you reattach to earth, you find him, spent, drenched in sweat and still bleeding, but gazing up at you with love like you have never seen. You grab a gauze and hold it to him, leaning down to kiss his neck as he struggles to regain his breath, and you wave off his attempt to recover your wound.

He wraps you in his arms, softening cock still inside you, and lays you to his chest. "Kara," he sighs. "That…holy fuck. Holy mother fuck."

You grin, remembering a teacher you had endured a year of at Catholic school…you and your classmates had always called her that. Ah, if she knew what you had just been up to…

He runs a hand through your hair, breathing heavily. "I can't express to you how I feel right now…I just feel…really…"

You laugh as you see the never-speechless Tom Hiddleston knocked completely without words. You trace a lazy finger over his gauze, wanting to fill in the words but not knowing if you can. "I think I understand. It really does make you feel alive."

He presses his lips to your head. "Thank you, so, so much, Kara," he whispers.

You look up at him and smile.

You stay there for some time, whispering, wondering, sharing what you had just done. Once the adrenaline wears off, though, Tom reluctantly lifts you up and off him, stating the need to clean the cuts.

He rolls over, reaching for the ointment, and stops short.

"Tom?" you whisper, wondering what was wrong. He stays still.

You extend a hand to his shoulder, pulling slightly.

He rolls back over, terror in his eyes as the sashimi's blade is sticking out of his chest, (_but how!?_) precisely where his heart beat below the skin. He reaches for you, blood erupting from his mouth. It covers you, and he sputters more as he tries to speak. The last word on his lips before he falls off the bed, dead, is your name.

You scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream until

His arms are around you, hand over your mouth, shushing, comforting, squeezing you in assurance. Your screams subside as you realize he is here, warm, holding you. It is dark, and from the lack of London night noise you know it must be long after midnight.

"It's all right, love," he whispers in your trembling ear. "Same nightmare?"

You shudder. "Yes."

He pulls your face to his in the darkness, pressing his forehead to yours, and begins the same calming speech he gives at every reappearance of the ghastly visions. "Kara. You are here, I am here. You are fine, I am fine."

"You are fine, I am fine," you repeat, shaking starting to subside.

"You have never harmed me."

"I have never harmed you."

"You are safe, I am safe. We are safe."

You breathe into him, the pounding of your heart subsiding. "You are safe. I am safe."

"That's my angel. Are you all right?"

"Yes," you whisper.

You collapse back onto the bed, in his arms, trying to shake off the visions. It had been two years since you had started cutting as you made love, and there had never been an instant of abject terror for him except for that first night, when you had thrown the knife as you both came. Afterwards, you had a moment of sheer, heart blasting fear when you tried to remember where it was as he rolled away to care for your wound. Of course, it was where you had thrown it, against the wall…but the memory of the possibility haunted you, and occasionally came to flaunt its ugly, unrealized potential in you nightmares. Together you had formed a plan, and had rigidly stuck to it, to prevent any further nightmares for you, but this one memory never left you.

He holds you, tightly, tracing the small white scars on your ribs—the spot you had chosen for your cuts. Thanks to your Catholic upbringing—which still spoke for you on occasion—it never saw the light of day, so you deemed it safe for this kind of secret.

In return you feel for his—the ones that would never be visible to a camera's lens, where his inner thigh meets his leg. After that first night at your collarbones, neither of you had never again cut anywhere else, save for the occasional fingertip, which he loves and which you happily do for him.

You lie there, together, touching the physical reminders that you are his, body and soul, and he yours—melded, alloyed indestructibly as one by passion and pain. Your breathing slows to a normal pace.

"Are you all right, Kara?" he asks again.

"Yes, I think so."

He leans into you, kissing you softly. "You know you will never be hurt with me."

You close your eyes, relaxing into his touch. "I know."

"Do you need—-" "Yes," you gasp. Before he gets up, he kisses you once more. Leaving your bed, he goes to the dresser to fetch a clean, new knife.


End file.
